This Old Brit Is Back ...

The fabled fat lady has finally finished singing, and sadly it is all over as far as our holidays are concerned.

But brrrrr, what a bloody rude awakening of a 'welcome home' we had.

To wake up in one's own long -looked-forward-to bed, shivering in seasonably, city of Liverpool shitty weather merely a matter of hours after sweltering for a fortnight in the Mediterranean's especially sumptuous sunshine.

Breakfast in a pleasant 22 degrees centigrade Barcelona, lunch in the northen Costa Brava's early afternoon's 25 degrees, evening meal in the scorching 31 degree, Perpignon region of the South of France, followed by another breakfast aboard the P & O channel-steamer ferry 'Pride of Canterbury', whilst crossing a moderately choppy English Channel in a 20 knot wind accompanied by fast falling temperatures of 16 to 15 degrees -- followed by breakfast number 3 back in mainland Britain.

Said last mentioned sustenance having been consumed in our own home town, after a gloomy grey morning, barely 12 degree awakening and eventual reluctant departure from the depths of our so oft tried, tested and oh so trusty, delightfully deluxe version of an eider-duck down filled duvet.

Running the risk of repetition -- brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr again.

So if you'd been betting that it wouldn't be long before this old bugger would be back to the business of moaning & groaning about something or other (if not several things simultaneously), then many congratulations -- since you have just hit the jackpot!

Grrrrrrrrrr.

The old saying is certainly true. All those lucky continentals have their lovely climates -- while we poor old Brits just have 'weather'.

Anyhow, 'ere we are again. All of a just-so and ever so subtle, golden-glow -- tan-wise talking that is.

And while we can't claim to be jet-lagged, because coaches cruise so much slower - be they continental class or not - we can quite truthfully claim to be right up to our 'airy old armpits in unpacking, fresh food shopping, catching up on phone calls/messages and so on.

All of which is why this particular post is set to be pretty short & sweet. But being as big & warm hearted a bunch as we ever were, we believed we should put all of you before ourselves by banging out something on the old blog as soon as possible.

(By the way, we heard that. Whadaya mean, flippin fibbin' pair of old farts?)

At this point we're prepared to gamble that it's a safe bet that none of you were aware, that for a full 17 days we never once read a newspaper, nor watched any TV at all, nor even eavesdropped momentarily on a single solitary radio transmission -- in absolutely any language.

Honestly. We kid you not. We've been completely cut off.

(Figuratively speaking of course.)

Hence, our earnestly respectful request for a further few hours of blogwriting respite, whilst we endeavour to immerse ourselves for a while in whatever worthwhile, earth shattering events have dared to occur in our absence.

Or to put it another, much less waffle-like manner and old duffer-like, posh poseur way -- we wanna play catch up.

Come to think of it, it's much more a case of needta than wanna.

So, to use [as we so often do] the corniest most hackneyed phraseology we can come up with -- 'stay tuned' and 'watch this space'.

Because, as a famous American general once so famously promised, we shall return.

Soon.

Within hours, in fact.

And get this. When we do, we absolutely promise to tell the full and unabridged, true-crime tale of our very own 'gripping-yarn' Barcelona adventure.

Including the crack Catalonian police squad car ride, and subsequent La Rambla police station visit -- both of which were quite literally, a couple of offers we could not refuse.

Yep, really.

No shit Sherlock, to coin a phrase.

.